Empire: A Novel

by Gore Vidal

  At the end of October, on a bright cold morning, Blaise boarded Hearst’s private car, Reva, on a railroad siding at Albany. He was greeted by the inevitable George, now grown to Taft-like proportions. “It never stops, Mr. Blaise. The Chief’s in the parlor. Mrs. Hearst won’t get out of bed, and little George won’t go to bed. I can’t wait till this is over.”

  To Blaise’s relief, Hearst was alone, going through a stack of newspapers. The blond hair was turning, with age, not gray but a curious brown. He looked up at Blaise, and smiled briefly. “Seven in the morning’s the only time I’ve got to myself. Look what Bennett’s done to me in the Herald.” Hearst held up a picture, with the headline “Hearst’s California Palace” and the sub-head “Built with coolie labor.”

  “You don’t have a house in California, with or without coolies.”

  Hearst dropped the newspaper. “Of course I don’t. It’s Mother’s house. Built by the Irish, I think, years ago. Well, it’s in the bag.”

  Blaise settled in an armchair, and a steward served them coffee. “The animated feather-duster,” Hearst’s name for Charles Evans Hughes, “is getting nowhere. No organization. No popular support.” Hearst gave Blaise a general impression of the campaign thus far. The entire Democratic ticket seemed to be winning; and Hughes could not ignite popular opinion despite the anti-Hearst press (the entire press not owned by Hearst), which was outdoing even Hearst himself when it came to inventions and libels. But the voters appeared unimpressed. “I’ve never seen such crowds.” Hearst’s pale eyes glittered. “And they’ll be back in two years’ time.”

  “What about the Archbold letters?” For Blaise, the letters were the essential proof of the rottenness of a system that could not survive much longer. Either the people would overthrow the government or, more likely, the government would overthrow the people, and set up some sort of dictatorship or junta. Blaise suspected that if it came to the latter, Roosevelt would do a better job than Hearst.

  “I don’t need the letters. I’m winning. The letters are for 1908. In case I have problems. You see, I’ll be the reform candidate then.”

  “If I were you, I’d use them now. Hit Roosevelt before he hits you.”

  “Why bother?” Hearst chewed on a lump of sugar. “There’s nothing Four Eyes can do to me, in this state, anyway.”

  The following Sunday, Blaise arrived at Caroline’s Georgetown house; on the first of the year she would move into her new house in Dupont Circle, close by the Pattersons.

  Blaise knocked on the door; there was no answer. He tried the door handle; it turned. As he stepped inside the entrance foyer, Jim Day appeared on the staircase, tying his tie.

  For an instant they stared, frozen, at each other. Then Jim finished his tie, as coolly as he could; the face was attractively flushed, the way it had been on the river-boat in St. Louis. “Caroline’s upstairs,” he said. “I have to go.” They met on the stairs; but did not shake hands. As Jim passed him, Blaise smelled the familiar warm scent.

  Caroline was in her bed, wearing a dressing gown trimmed with white feathers. “Now,” she greeted Blaise, in a high tragic Olga Nethersole voice, “you know.”

  “Yes.” Blaise sat opposite her, in a love-seat, and tried to look for signs of love-making. Except for a large crumpled towel on the floor, there were no clues to what had taken place—how many times? and why had he never suspected?

  “It is all quite respectable. Since Jim is Emma’s father, we must keep this in the family. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes.” Blaise saw the whole thing clearly at last, including the otherwise meaningless marriage to John. He did his best not to imagine Jim’s body on the bed, all brown skin and smooth muscles. “It would be the end of him, if Kitty knew,” he added, gratuitously.

  “Or the beginning.” Caroline was airy. “The world doesn’t end any more with an affair.”

  “It does in politics, in his state.”

  “If she were to divorce him, I’d fill the breach, as best I could. That’s not the worst fate, is it?”

  “For him, probably.” Blaise was, obscurely, furious.

  But what might have been obscure to him was blazingly plain to Caroline. “You’re jealous,” she teased. “You want him, too. Again.”

  Blaise thought that he might, like some human volcano, erupt with—blood? “What are you talking about?” He could do no better, aware that he had given himself away.

  “I said—I repeat we should keep all this in the family as,” she smiled mischievously, “we seem to have done, anyway. We have the same tastes, in men, anyway …”

  “You bitch!”

  “Comme tu est drôle, enfin, Cette orage …” Then Caroline shifted to English, the language of business. “If you try to make trouble between Jim and Kitty, or Jim and me, your night of passion aboard the river-boat, with poor Jim, doing his innocent best to give you pleasure, will be as ruinous for you as anything you can do to him or to me or to poor blind Kitty.” Caroline swung her legs over the side of the bed, and put on her slippers. “Control yourself. You’ll have a stroke one of these days, and Frederika will be a widow, as well as my best friend.”

  In the back of Blaise’s mind, there had always been the thought—hope—that he and Jim might one day reenact what had happened aboard the river-boat. But, ever since, the embarrassed Jim had kept his distance; and once again, Caroline was triumphant. From Tribune to Jim, Caroline had got everything that he had wanted. In the presence of so much good fortune, Blaise was conscious of a certain amount of sulphur in the air. But for now at least, he must be cool, serene, alert.

  “The White House thinks that Hearst will win.” Caroline was at her dressing table, rebuilding her hair.

  “So do I. So does he. So does the animated feather-duster.”

  “Mr. Root is going to Utica.” Caroline pulled her hair straight back and stared into the mirror, without apparent pleasure.

  “What does that mean?”

  “The President is sending him. To Hearst.”

  “Too late.”

  “Mr. Root carries great weight in New York. As the President’s emissary.… I would be nervous if I were Mr. Hearst.”

  But all Blaise wanted to speak of was Jim, and that, of course, was the only subject that he and Caroline could never again mention to each other.

  Blaise was with the Chief in New York City when the Secretary of State spoke in Utica. It was the first of November. The weather was peculiarly dismal, even for New York, and a drizzle that was neither snow nor rain made muddy the streets.

  Hearst had his own news-wire in his study, set up between busts of Alexander the Great and—why?—Tiberius. Blaise was at his side as the message from Utica came through, even as Root was speaking. Elsewhere in the room, Brisbane kept a number of politicians in a good mood, an easy task since none doubted that soon they would all be going to Albany in the train of the conquering Hearst.

  As read, line by line, the speech was lapidary. Root’s style was Roman, school of Caesar rather than Cicero. The short sentences were hurled like so many knives at a target; and none missed. Absentee congressman. Hypocrite-capitalist. False friend of labor. Creature of the bosses. Demagogue in the press and in politics, pitting class against class.

  “Well,” said the Chief, with a small smile, “I’ve heard worse.”

  But Blaise suspected that he was indeed about to hear worse; and he did, toward the end. Root read Ambrose Bierce’s quatrain, calling for McKinley’s murder. Hearst stiffened as the familiar words stuttered past them on the wire. Root quoted other Hearstian indictments of McKinley, inciting the mad anarchist to murder. Then Root quoted Roosevelt’s original attack on the “exploiter of sensationalism” who must share, equally, in the murder of the beloved-by-all President McKinley.

  Hearst was now very pale, as the thin ribbon of text passed through his fingers to Blaise’s. “I say, by the President’s authority, that in penning these words, with the horror of President McKinley’s murder fresh befo
re him, he had Mr. Hearst specifically in mind.”

  “The son of a bitch,” whispered Hearst. “When I finish with him …”

  The message went on: “And I say, by his authority, that what he thought of Mr. Hearst then he thinks of Mr. Hearst now.”

  So it would be on the charge of regicide that Hearst was to be brought down at last. Blaise marvelled at the exactness with which Roosevelt, using Root for knife, struck the lethal blow.

  “Champagne?” Brisbane approached with a bottle in hand.

  “Why not?” The Chief, who never swore, having just sworn, who never drank, now drank. Then he turned to Blaise. “I want you to go over the Archbold letters with me.”

  “With pleasure, if I can publish first.”

  “Simultaneously, anyway, with me.”

  – 3 –

  CAROLINE was shown into the Red Room, forever referred to by Roosevelt loyalists as the Room of the Great Error. She had received a last-minute invitation to a “family” dinner, which could well mean, considering the Roosevelt family, fifty people. But it was indeed, for the most part, family. Alice and her husband, Nick Longworth, were already there, with, to Caroline’s surprise, the sovereign himself, who sprang to his feet, rather like a Jack-in-the-box, and said, just like his music-hall imitators, “Dee-light-ed, Mrs. Sanford. Come sit here. By me.”

  “Why not by us?” asked Alice.

  “Because I want to talk to her and not to you.”

  “There is no reason,” said Alice, “to be rude, simply because I’m the wife of a mere member of the House …”

  But the President had turned his back on daughter and son-in-law, and led Caroline to a settee near the door, so situated that if the door was open, as now, the settee was invisible. Roosevelt practiced several unpleasant grimaces on Caroline, before he began. “You know about the Archbold letters?”

  Caroline nodded. Trimble had received copies of a number but not the entire set. “I gather your brother Blaise has seen the lot.”

  “We’re not speaking at the moment.”

  “But if he decides to publish, they will appear in the Tribune.”

  “If I decide to publish, they will appear in the Tribune.”

  Roosevelt clicked his teeth three times, as if sending out a coded message to a ship in distress at sea. Then he removed his pince-nez and polished it thoroughly with a scrap of chamois. Caroline noticed how dull the eyes were without the enhancement of shining magnifying glass. “You are the majority shareholder?”

  “Mr. Trimble and I are, and he does what I want him to do.”

  “Good.” The pince-nez was again in its glittering place. “I hope good. Would you publish?”

  “I would have to have a motive. Senator Foraker would have to introduce some legislation, favorable, let us say, to Standard Oil. Then I would publish, of course.”

  “Of course! As you know, I have done—the Adminstration has done—nothing for Standard Oil. Quite the contrary.”

  “But,” said Caroline boldly, “there are your letters to Archbold.”

  “Which I don’t even recall. He was a friend, from years ago. He is a gentleman. I am certain there is nothing in anything that I ever wrote him that I would not be happy to see on the front page of every newspaper in the country.”

  Caroline arranged the spray of hot-house lilies that Marguerite had persuaded her, against her better judgment, to wear on a cold November night. “I’m afraid, Mr. President, that you will probably read those letters on every front page except mine, unless they prove—relevant.” Caroline liked the vagueness of the word.

  “You mean that Hearst will publish?”

  “Exactly. He wants revenge. Mr. Root—and you—lost him the election.”

  “What did he expect? It is hardly usual for a republic to allow its own overthrow.” This was said with such swift savagery that Caroline was taken aback.

  “You think Hearst would do that?”

  “I put nothing past him. He is outside our law, our conventions, our republic. He believes in class war. That is why I would do anything to finish him off …”

  “You did do everything, and he has said that he will never run for office again.” The rage of Hearst had been something to behold. From a commanding lead he had, yet again, because of outside intervention, lost an election that was his: this time to the egregious Hughes. Of one and a half million votes cast, Hearst lost by fifty-eight thousand. Except for Hearst, every Democrat on the ticket had been elected, and the entirely unheard-of was at least heard of: the candidate for lieutenant governor, dimmest of posts, was won by an upstate Democrat, an aristocratic Chanler, hardly known for his appeal to the masses, or anything else. Roosevelt had finished Hearst; would Hearst return the compliment? “I gather,” said Caroline, “that as many Democrats are involved in Standard Oil payoffs as Republicans?”

  “Which explains why this noble citizen, with his so-called proofs of corruption, has been delaying publication for what could be years, to help not justice but his own career.” Roosevelt was now speaking for eternity, and Edith, not one to abide too much eternity on an empty stomach, signalled that it was time to go in to dinner.

  SEVENTEEN

  – 1 –

  IWILL NEVER AGAIN be a candidate. But I shall continue to live in New York and educate and support the principles of reform which I have always stood for.” Thus, William Randolph Hearst withdrew from politics, as a candidate. But Blaise knew that the Chief would now be even more formidable than before. Free of the wheeling-and-dealing required of a man canvassing votes, Hearst could not only do as he pleased but, if he chose, transform the republic itself. He now knew more than anyone else about the internal workings (for the most part, corrupt) of the republic; he also knew that, with time and money spent, he could decide, through his Independent League, the outcome of numerous elections.

  Bryan, on the other hand, was obliged to shift his position according to the prevailing wind. Where, today, was sixteen-to-one silver? Once the only means whereby the American worker, tacked with three nails to his cross of gold, might one day descend—or ascend?—silver had become a non-subject. Yet, unlike Bryan, Hearst had never wavered in his own program. But now he was finished as a politician. Of course, in the press, he could continue to be the working-man’s full-time tribune. Precisely why the working-man had been selected for this distinction, Blaise could never fathom, but he could not fault Hearst for consistency, unlike Bryan and Roosevelt, who tacked this way and that. What, after all, did Roosevelt think of that solid rock upon which his party was based, the tariff?—which he used to sigh over in private, and refer to as “expediency,” a price he must pay to his supporters for the empire that he was assembling for their descendants. Bryan was at least consistent in his hatred for war and the conquest of far-off places and the mindless acquisition of other races. Hearst was genuinely ambivalent about Roosevelt’s tempting vision of empire. Sometimes he approved; sometimes not.

  Blaise put this down to Hearst’s hatred of the British empire; after all, much of his support was Irish. In fact, whenever Hearst could think of nothing to say to an Irish audience, he would announce, as though the thought were new to him, “You know, if I ever get to be president, the first thing I’m going to do is send an Irish-American to the Court of St. James’s. That’ll wake them up.” The cheering would be deafening. He still used the same line, adding, “I offer the suggestion to some future president, and hope ardently he’ll do it.”

  For Theodore Roosevelt, Hearst had only contempt. “He sold himself to the devil in order to get elected, and you’ve got to hand it to him—for once, he’s kept his side of the bargain.” Blaise knew that the first part was true. Roosevelt, in his famous pre-election panic, had promised the rich everything. Then, as he would never again run for president, he double-crossed the lot, or as Frick not so dryly put it, “We bought him but he isn’t staying bought.”

  Somehow, whenever Blaise thought of Hearst—no longer, remotely, the Chief to hi
m—he thought of unopened crates. He had acquired everything, tangible and intangible, and then never got around to unpacking what was his; and making sense of it. Currently, literally, unopened crates provided the only furniture in Hearst’s new home, the Clarendon Apartment Building at the corner of Riverside Drive and Eighty-sixth Street. Hearst had taken over the top three floors, some thirty rooms.

  At the very top—the twelfth floor—Hearst and Blaise went over the Archbold letters, spread across the width of a huge refectory table from Spain, pitted with newly drilled wormholes, as guarantee of antiquity. Over the years, at Saint-Cloud-le-Duc, Blaise had learned a good deal about furniture. Over the years, Hearst had learned almost nothing. But the law of averages was, eventually, on his side. If one bought everything, sooner or later one might really buy something, and the lost Giorgione would be his. Blaise wondered if the something might not also apply to politics. If one kept on long enough, spending money, organizing voters, one might end up with the lost—what? Crown, no doubt, in Hearst’s case.

  “What happens if Archbold brings charges against you, for theft?”

  “I didn’t steal anything. I just copied some letters offered me pro bona publica.”

  “Pro bono publico.”

  “That’s what I said. I wish I could make more out of Theodore’s letters.” Hearst looked wistfully at the short enigmatic letters from the White House to Archbold. Within the “right” context, they could send the President to jail. But there was no context at all to these anodyne texts. “Of course, one could cook something up.”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Blaise firmly.

  “I won’t. Until I have something to go on. I have detectives at work, going over his bank accounts. Also, the Republican Party’s accounts, which are almost as bad …”

  “… as the Democrats’.”

  Hearst looked at Blaise gloomily. From the floor beneath them, they could hear Millicent’s voice, loud and harsh enough to be heard at the back of the third balcony of the Palace Theater. She was at work with her designer, creating if not a pleasure dome, the largest apartment in New York, filled with what was, by now, the largest collection of old and new antiques in the Western world. “I’m going to start off with Hanna and Quay. They’re dead. I’m going to show how much they collected for Roosevelt’s campaign. Then I’m going to show what TR has done for Standard Oil …”